Dinner time begin. Steak on Jake's plate had gone cold.

Across the candlelit table, his new girlfriend. A young, polished, perfect—sipped her wine, oblivious to the phone vibrating between them. The screen flashed a name Jake hadn't deleted out of sheer guilt: "Home."

"Why are you calling again?!" He snarled into the receiver, loud enough that nearby diners turned. "You bother me so much!"

Static crackled. Then–

"It's the hospital."

His ex-wife's voice was hoarse, not from crying (he knew that sound too well), it's from something worse. "They found a tumor. Stage three."

The restaurant noise faded. His girlfriend's manicured hand paused mid-air, fork clattering against china.

"I just thought..." She let out a shaky breath. "Our daughter should know her father before–"

Jake's reflection in the window showed a stranger. A man who'd traded stretch marks for designer dresses, who'd mistaken laugh lines for flaws.

But indeed, tumor from his daughter had been growing long before the divorce.

Here it was suddenly, the woman across the table smelled like antiseptic for him, not Chanel.